


Strings of existence

by Scoby



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Hopeful Ending, Index For My Other Fics, Metaphysics, One Shot, Post-Canon Fix-It, The World Between Worlds (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28652631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: ”You’re not doing this. The effort would kill you.””I’m afraid that’s what it did.””You’re not serious. You can’t… I gave you everything so that you could live. Rey…””I know. But you must understand. There was nothing left for me. Not without you.”
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	Strings of existence

**Author's Note:**

> An index to my favourites of my Reylo fics, in the form of a post-TROS fix-it

She kissed him like she was drinking him in after a long day of scavenging without water. And just when she thought she could not get any happier, there was his smile. She had imagined many times how it would look like, but she had not guessed that it would be the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. And she had not quite anticipated the amount of dimples and all the heartfelt joy in his eyes.

The Force Itself seemed to light up in a flame around them - until she sensed a disturbance. First, it was just a dimming in the Force. But in the next moment, Ben’s body collapsed down from her arms, dead. Then he faded away, somewhere into the Force. Only his hollow shirt was left, until it lost its memory of his shape and draped on the ground.

And just like that, she was left more alone than she had ever been. She only realised it now, but over the long years spent on Jakku, waiting for her parents, she had always sensed his existence somehow. She had felt part of a dyad even though she had had absolutely no name for the sensation. Now, she felt something more than the solitude. Her whole being felt hollow. She knew what she had to do.

Clutching Ben’s shirt, Rey found her way through the wrecked citadel back to the stone elevator. It still moved upwards when she stepped on it. She went all the way to her ship and activated the holorecorder to send a transmission.

“Finn, I can sense that you survived and I can’t tell you how happy I am about it. You deserve all the happiness in the universe and to enjoy every possible thing in the galaxy at peace. We all fought so hard for it, and we did it… Now, there are some things you should know.”

Her gaze wandered around for a moment as she sought for the right words.

”First is that I was right, and so was Leia. There was good in Kylo Ren all the time, and finally he turned to the light and saved me. Just in case people think that I destroyed Palpatine alone and that’s why your fleet was saved, it’s not true. I couldn’t have done it without him. And there’s something more.”

Tears welled up in her eyes and she had to swallow a couple of times to gather her voice.

”He died, and something beyond that. He somehow passed out of my field and into the Force, and I have to go look for him. The Force is strong in this place, and I know that I have to do it here, which means… Goodbye, Finn. We’ll see each other again, in some way. I believe that. I love you.”

She turned off the transmission just as the tears broke loose. She heard Finn’s shouts from the ship’s comm channel, but she did not look back. Holding the black sweater to her chest, she ran to the stone elevator once more, rode it down and made it back to the demolished throne room. In the middle of it, she sat down on the ground, closed her eyes and tuned into the Force.

The Force swelled with the Dark Side here. But not anymore as fully as she had sensed when first arriving here. Strands of the Light were already breaking through, and as her own presence pushed further into the space, the Light grew stronger and started to blend with the Dark, like practicing co-existence for the first time in generations.

There, in the midst of blending chords of Force, Rey found an opening. She sensed it as a similar shape as the entrance to the citadel. A wide horizontal slit that was open to her. She could hear his voice from the other side of it, not clear enough to make out any words, but clear enough to know it was him. That made her body smile for the last time before she left this life and went in through the slit.

First, she ignored the way how the nothingness around her seemed to gather into structures that were like strings made of concentrated fumes. She ignored how those strings formed a labyrinth all around her, so that there was no up or down. She was walking seemingly on nothing and the space around her extended infinitely to every direction. And somehow, her insides seemed to be continuing infinitely, too.

But she ignored all of that because she had eyes only for him. He was right there, focused on examining a hazy string by his head. When she came closer, he whipped around to face her.

”You’re not doing this. The effort would kill you.”

”I’m afraid that’s what it did.”

”You’re not serious. You can’t… I gave you everything so that you could live. Rey…”

”I know. But you must understand. There was nothing left for me. Not without you.”

”It’s too late then. You can’t go back now. Just like I can’t.”

”I don’t care. I choose you, Ben, wherever you are. What do you have there?”

She gestured at the string he had been studying and he took her arm to pull her in for a closer look.

”Oh!” she gasped. Because when she saw it, she also remembered it. The misty-looking string actually consisted of tiny fragments of life. A life that she had lived but only remembered now that she was here. "That was when we went to the same therapist because of our [repetitive enemies-to-lovers relationship patterns](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27548497/chapters/67377730).”

”I remember it, too. See, there are more.”

Only now fully taking in her surroundings, Rey realised that every string was a similar collection of fragments from an alternative life. And now that she saw them, she could recall all of them. Her first thought was: “You’ve been a mess in so many lifetimes! Just think about it when we got addicted to that [drug that changed our canon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28645950/chapters/70218117), or when you spent more than a decade estranged from your parents because [they were Reylo shippers and you were a fanatic Anti](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27548497/chapters/67377730). If you hadn’t met me when we were both hacked into Tumblr’s servers, you might have stayed in your cage your whole life.”

”I would have got another chance. See, we’re here right now and we must have been in a place like this before. Don’t forget how we were [trapped into multiple consecutive lifetimes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26642092/chapters/66655708) when we tried to chase one where we could grow old together.”

”I liked how it worked out in the end.”

”Me, too. I’ve cherished every chance to reincarnate or resurrect with you, like that time when I [fell to Earth first](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28522767/chapters/69892371) and some locals had to help me back.”

”That’s one of the best moments I remember from that life. But even in those cases when no flashy stuff like that has happened, there’s been so much to cherish. I mean just simple nights sharing a bed with you through the Force bond, like when you [stole my blanket](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24245107) to the other side of the bond and later we had to find a discreet way to switch the blankets back.”

”My favourites are all the nights we've used for [cuddling and kissing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23982769), like there.” Ben pulled her closer to a string containing particularly cute and fluffy fragments.

”Yeah, I’ve seen that you [love to cuddle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25598647), and [hug](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28046940).”

”You like it, too. Just think how you melted when we met at a [ cuddle party ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26421241).”

Rey stilled for a while, staring at the fragments in that particular string of existence with longing. Then she turned to look at the one next to it.

”But the weirdest was when you appeared through the Force bond in [Rose’s bed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25843123/chapters/62785663) when I shared a room with her.”

”You really lost it, didn’t you?”

”Not my favourite thing to recall.”

”What’s your favourite then?”

”Maybe when you [bought me flowers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24612898) from your raid. Or all the ways you’ve proposed to me: on a [vegan pizza](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24317971/chapters/58626352); by turning to the [ dark side](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26227621/chapters/63834394) for no reason…”

”I did have a reason.”

”To last for sixty hours in bed? How could I ever take it for so long?”

”That’s not what your grandfather said.”

”You’ve let him influence you too much in too many lifetimes. He made you propose way too violently. People died. I preferred when you did it through an [air strike](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24817660) to the Resistance base."

”It was not an air strike. That time nobody died.”

”It was not far from it either. What’s your favourite string?”

”I liked it when we played [Spin the sonic wrench](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24526909) and [Pantomime](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27825265). And I love all the kids we had.”

”Me, too.”

”You've had a [questionable way of reading bedtime stories](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24992080), though."

”I think I was somehow always conscious about [that time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24710263/chapters/59725825) when it first seemed that we couldn’t have a baby no matter how hard we tried. So I wanted to give everything in the universe to those kids we did have."

”I loved also the kids you had on your own.”

”You were an absolutely [terrifying Santa Claus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28320519) for them.”

”They liked it. You’d be surprised at how big fans of Kylo Ren kids can be, just like [on that cruise ship](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26181610/chapters/63710059) when he was a mascot.”

”Yeah, I remember. And the kids seemed to love you at the [First Order officers’ dinner party](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25221466/chapters/61133698) where you brought me through the bond.”

”I should have thought about it twice. It lead to a huge mess when you organised the sex strike against the Order.”

”It worked well for us in the end. Who knows, maybe the people in both the Order and the Resistance always wanted us together.”

”That makes a lot of sense. Why would they otherwise have let us go for that [date](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27892120)? I wonder if even the purpose of sending the bodyguard squadrons was that they wanted to see some action.”

”We did organise a pretty good distraction for them, though. And then there were all those other times when they were not so subtle, like [there](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24473623/chapters/59067520) or [there](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26136298), when even the droids really stanned us. I had no idea that was going on. But looking at it from here, they're quite hilarious.”

”Oh, yes, there they really made a big hustle out of it. I’ve many times had the feeling that even the Force itself, you know…”

”…shipped us? Are you referring to when we had the [nearly identical wet dream](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24828916)? You were cruel to make me describe it.”

”You looked too hot describing it." His eyes grew darker as he turned his gaze straight to her from the string that had just made them both breathe heavier. "Yes, I mean that, and the time when the Force [practically made us bang](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24372031).”

”Isn’t it weird how in some of these strings of existence, sex was so natural to us, and [there](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25899616/chapters/62939620) it caused us so much trouble, even though we were the same people?”

”At least [there](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25859806) you seem to have no problem. That looks like a filthy play for a little girl. I wonder why I see it here when I’m not even in it....”

”Come on, everyone plays with Barbies that way. I think you see it because we played that you're Ken.”

”Maybe we resemble Barbie and Ken a little. We’ve had so many different professions.”

”Exactly, like I’ve been a [dancer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26513887/chapters/64620880), [race car driver](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28216872/chapters/69143763), [climate activist](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24317971/chapters/58626352), [cruise mascot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26181610/chapters/63710059) and [props assistant for Revenge of the Sith](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25642366)."

”I think you did best as a cruise mascot. Our narrative was spot on.”

”Thanks, you were not bad either.”

”So, what do you want to do now?” Ben traced the blurry edge of a string with the tips of his fingers.

”Let’s go start something new.” Rey smirked, took his hand and led the way to the beginning of an empty string that was just starting to form out of the surrounding emptiness.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, feed me with kudos/comments and find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/IamScoby)


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